Kedarnath Templeਕੇਦਾਰਨਾਥ ਮੰਦਰ

What is Kedarnath Temple?

Kedarnath is a stone temple to Shiva standing at 3,583 metres (11,755 feet) in the Garhwal Himalayas, near the Mandakini river in Rudraprayag district, Uttarakhand. It is the highest of the twelve Jyotirlingas, the shrines where Shiva is worshipped as a self-manifested pillar of light, and it is the first and most visited of the five Panch Kedar temples. It is also one of the four temples of the Chota Char Dham pilgrimage of the northern Himalayas, alongside Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri. To Tamil Shaivas it is one of the 275 paadal petra sthalams praised in the Tevaram hymns.

The name itself is ancient. Kedarnath means "lord of the field", from the Sanskrit kedara (field) and natha (lord), and one Sanskrit text explains the name by saying "the crop of liberation" grows here. Devotees worship Shiva here as Kedarnath, Lord of Kedar Khanda, the region's historical name. The presiding lingam is regarded as svayambhu, self-manifested rather than carved by human hands, and it is traditionally anointed with ghee.

The Pandava legend and the five Panch Kedar shrines

Tradition links the temple's origin to the Pandavas of the Mahabharata. After the Kurukshetra war, the brothers wanted to atone for the killing in the battle, so they left their kingdom and went looking for Shiva's blessing. They searched first in Varanasi, but Shiva wanted to avoid them, so he took the form of a bull and hid in the Garhwal hills. Bhima spotted the bull grazing near Guptakashi, "hidden Kashi", recognised it as Shiva and grabbed it by the tail and hind legs. The bull sank into the ground and surfaced in five parts: the hump at Kedarnath, the arms at Tungnath, the face at Rudranath, the navel and stomach at Madhyamaheshwar, and the hair at Kalpeshwar. The Pandavas built temples at each of the five sites, which are worshipped together as the Panch Kedar.

Historians place the shrine's antiquity differently. The earliest written reference to Kedara appears in the Skanda Purana, from around the 7th to 8th century, and the temple was certainly a major pilgrimage centre by the 12th century, when it is named in the Kritya-kalpataru of the Gahadavala minister Bhatta Lakshmidhara. Tradition credits the 8th-century philosopher Adi Shankara with reviving the temple; one of his hagiographies says he attained Mahasamadhi in the mountains near Kedarnath, and a monument marking his purported resting place stands behind the temple. Built of great grey stone slabs, the temple shares its North-Indian Himalayan architecture with Tungnath and Madhyamaheshwar.

Why is the temple open only six months a year?

Extreme Himalayan weather keeps the temple shut for half the year. It opens around Akshaya Tritiya in April and closes around Kartik Purnima, the autumn full moon, in November. During the winter, the deity is carried down to the Omkareshwar temple at Ukhimath, about 41 kilometres away, where worship continues for six months. There is no road to the shrine: pilgrims reach it by an uphill trek of roughly 17 kilometres from Gaurikund, or by helicopter.

There is also an unwritten religious custom: after completing the darshan at the five Panch Kedar temples, pilgrims visit Vishnu at Badrinath as a final affirmation that they have received Shiva's blessing.

What happened at Kedarnath in 2013?

On 16 and 17 June 2013, the Kedarnath valley was struck by catastrophic flash floods. Water burst from the Chorabari Tal lake above the town and roared down the Mandakini, washing away shops, hotels and roads, and killing hundreds of pilgrims and residents. A massive boulder was carried to the rear of the temple and lodged there, splitting the debris flow and sending it around the sides of the building. The temple itself survived without major damage, devotees sheltered inside it for hours before the Army airlifted them out, and the rock that shielded the shrine is now worshipped as Bhim Shila, the God's Rock.

Engineers from the Archaeological Survey of India and IIT Madras later examined the structure with non-destructive testing and found it stable, with no major danger to its foundation or walls. The shrine stayed closed for a year while the debris was cleared, and then the pilgrimage resumed, larger than ever. Kedarnath received about 1,652,000 visitors in 2024, compared with 87,629 in 1987.

Who looks after the temple?

The shrine is administered by the Shri Badrinath Kedarnath Temple Committee, first constituted under a 1939 act and reconstituted by the Uttarakhand government in 2002, with seventeen members drawn from the state assembly, district councils and government nominees. Its rites carry a South Indian imprint: the head priest, the Raval, traditionally comes from the Veerashaiva (Lingayat) community of Karnataka. The Raval does not perform the pujas himself; he instructs his assistants, and five main priests rotate the head-priest role year by year. The Raval travels with the deity to Ukhimath in winter. On a ridge above the complex stands the open-air shrine of Bhairavnath, the temple's guardian deity.